Date: 02 Sep 1997 23:31:22 +0100
From: Peter Flynn <pflynn@imbolc.ucc.ie>
In-reply-to: <970901212201_623719572@emout18.mail.aol.com> (Albertfine@aol.com)
To: www-html@w3.org
Message-id: <199709022231.XAA16177@imbolc.ucc.ie>
Subject: Re: HTML Streaming
Albert writes:
I use MSIE. I was mistaken. I thought Peter asked about text terminals.
Ah. But that was in a different context entirely. I was talking about
real-time character-by-charcter display there, not about fonts.
>This means that saying a paragraph is '200 characters' tells me *NOTHING*
>about how much screen territory it will take. It could consist of nothing
It is characters and spaces. It tells you something. If you assume
an average word length, you can derive even more. I did note, in an
earlier post, a degree of error.
It tells you nothing at all, I'm afraid. Any book on typography will
explain why. Have a look at Charles Fyffe's _Basic Copyfitting_
(Studio Vista, London, 289-79705-5) which I've mentioned here before.
You _really_ need to understand something about fonts before you
venture into this stuff...one of the big problems with Mosaic and
Netscape was that they were written by people who knew zilch about
typography, however much they knew about IP and X graphics.
///Peter